Border collies draw fans to farm

PENINSULA, Ohio - The closest that most city dwellers get to viewing an actual sheepherding trial is in Babe, the 1995 movie about a pig.

PENINSULA, Ohio — The closest that most city dwellers get to viewing an actual sheepherding trial is in Babe, the 1995 movie about a pig.

“That’ll do, pig,” dour farmer Hoggett deadpans after Babe usurps the job of a border collie to win the contest.

But at the Spicy Lamb Farm near Peninsula, the border collies are the real superstars, said shepherd Laura DeYoung. Visitors flock to the farm to see dogs moving her herds, which include about 80 sheep.

“We couldn’t believe how many people wanted border collies,” DeYoung said after she began having workshops and herding demonstrations at the farm about a year ago.

As many as 250 people have attended the daylong sessions, some with their dogs, to see border collies do what they are born to do. Many of the visitors wanted to know whether their dogs could be taught such tasks.

“The dogs (border collies) are born with this instinct, and then we breed them for the work,” she said.

She owns several border collies, “considered the Cadillacs of sheepherding” dogs, she said. A shepherd is always on the lookout for a pup that can fill the role.

“It’s hard to get a good team of dogs to respect one another,” she said.

DeYoung, whose border collies move her ewes from one field to the next each day under the watchful eye of a “guardian” llama, said her biggest helpmate is Tip, a border collie that gave birth three weeks ago to five puppies.

“Tip is my No. 1 helper. I couldn’t do it all around here without her,” said DeYoung, a mother of twin 15-year-old boys and a 6-year-old daughter.

Tip controlled the herd right up to her delivery date, took a few days off, and was back on the job soon after giving birth, DeYoung said.

“She needs a break from (the puppies) once in a while,” she said.

DeYoung, proprietor of the farm she leases from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park as a part of the Countryside Initiative farm lease program, was raised in Britain after her father accepted a job transfer there from Akron. She learned to love the green, open countryside, where she saw her first herding trials.

In 2007, she started operating the Spicy Lamb Farm, where she raises Dorset sheep for meat and wool.

DeYoung realized that she could help dog owners — particularly those with common herding breeds such as the Australian shepherd, kelpie, cattle dog and the New Zealand huntaway — to learn to herd sheep. “Most people don’t have the sheep or the land needed to train them,” she said.

There was so much enthusiasm for the demonstrations that DeYoung brought in a seasoned trainer to give lessons and assess individual dogs’ herding instincts.

She charges $50 for an assessment that can take one or two sessions. “We are really training the owners” to train their dogs, she said.

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